Report: Joe Philbin Was Fired Because He Didn’t Agree to ‘Assistant Changes’

Joe Philbin would still be the head coach of the Miami Dolphins today if he agreed to make changes to his staff, according to a former longtime NFL special teams coach.

“I heard from pretty good source that over in London that Philbin met with the owner and decided that they would ride it out,” Mike Westhoff said on WQAM’s Joe Rose Show Thursday. “But then Mike Tannenbaum got involved. They wanted to make some assistant changes, which I can understand that. Of course Mike is gonna make changes. Believe me, I know him very well. And then when they got back, they presented that to Philbin and he said no, so they changed him. They went the opposite direction with Dan Campbell, an ex-player, which I thought they would do, and an aggressive guy and gonna be a different approach.”

Westhoff clearly has beef with Tannenbaum from his Jets days, saying “he’ll save his own behind, that’s what he’ll do” when asked by Joe what he’ll do in Miami in the long-run.

“He’s a splash guy. He likes the big splash. When he was our pro personnel guy back before when I first went to New York, to tell you truth I liked him… Then when he became General Manager, things changed. He likes to make that splash. Being the big splash guy — Ndamukong Suh. That big money. Throw the big money out there and then build your team around that. Sometimes I always felt that Mike lost a little bit of touch with who he was bringing in and how he was trying to piece it together. We disagreed very vehemently, it’s one of the reasons why I’m out of the business.

Westhoff did say “this is a good change” going with Dan Campbell, “because this is an aggressive guy.”

One thing that is a constant is the Dolphins remain an organizational shit show.